


As Long As You Follow

by returntosaturn



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Austria, Hiking, Picnic, Spring, Traveling, beer garden, book tour, impending war, marriage questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-21 23:50:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: It must be a scandalous sight. Especially so, because she bears no ring.He draws his rough fingertips over her bare knuckles in a certain kind of wistfulness that makes her hearten but straighten. In a new, sudden wave of sobriety she can see that he is made for these landscapes. His bronze and green and goldenrod are complimentary to the spring palette of the mountains and the old city at its feet.// a moment in Newt & Tina's travels. Thoughts about war, weddings, and such.





	As Long As You Follow

**_Saltzburg, Austria, 1929_ **

This is her favorite place, and she declares it so beneath the grove of trees they sit under at a quaint bistro table set with matching glasses of dark ale.

He laughs openly, and if she has deemed the way the sun filters through the new leaves as the most beautiful sight she’s seen in a long while, his toothy smile trumps it several times over. He tells her she’s had a bit too much, and she insists that he is wrong; she isn’t drunk, she’s happy.

She’s been happy since December. Since he mailed her a ticket, imploring her to meet him in London to accompany him on this leg of the book tour.

_I can think of no one else I’d rather have as my bodyguard,_ he’d written. _There will most certainly be a great many ladies vying for the attention of the most renowned Magizoologist of the age._

There’s a new ease about him, she’s noticed. Whether it stems from his recent publication or the fact that they are finally together on the same side of the ocean after many months. The reasons don’t matter half as much as the fact that he _is_.

She watches in rapt attention as his tongue darts out to catch the foam at his lip when takes a pull, and she settles her chin in her palm, sleepy-eyed and satiated. 

Other men—and the few women scattered about the grove with babies on their shoulders—eye her with a critical air.

Gray trousers, and further along through her pint than her companion, who is dressed more vividly than the flowers that boundary the wide garden they all sit in. It must be a scandalous sight. Especially so, because she bears no ring.

He draws his rough fingertips over her bare knuckles in a certain kind of wistfulness that makes her hearten but straighten. In a new, sudden wave of sobriety she can see that he is made for these landscapes. His bronze and green and goldenrod are complimentary to the spring palette of the mountains and the old city at its feet.

But she has thought the same thing in Dublin. The same thing in Moscow. He blends easily except where he does not, and where people think he ought.

But people have many extraneous worries. She is content to let them have them if she can have this man whose heart is deep enough to challenge the injustice of the world and wide enough to heal those who are subject to it, and yet still somehow has enough room within himself to _simply_ love her. 

As time beats on, it is clearer and clearer that by virtue of who they are, they are silently and instinctively committed to the coming war that that fateful December in the subway had stirred. She can manage it, with these peaceful moments beside him to remind her that the world has not gone dark yet.

It is at the fringes of this thought that he stands and offers his arm, and they pick their way dizzily back to their rooms, slow and soaking in every bit of the cool breeze and sunlight.

Even in the sunlit stairwell, where they pause to kiss and untuck her blouse, her back pressed to the cold stone of the wall. She blinks up to him and catches the embarrassed flush in his cheeks, set rosy by the light from the window. It has never been typical of them to neck in an open space like this, but she gives him a smile, strokes his cheek, and perhaps this small affection will spur it to happen more often.

The flat that has been let to them by the Austrian Ministry is just as bright as outdoors and the afternoon sunbeams through the naked window paint his hair shining gold when he meets her on the bed.

She arches into him and grasps at the sheets, and he whispers her name over and over like a secret spell as the sun sets, dipping wide against the windowsill and sending hard, slanted shafts of light that cast their silhouettes in hazy relief against the wall.

The fall asleep too early, but wake at some point during the night to repeat and rediscover. 

In the morning, they wake with the blue of dawn and dress for the day. He wants to show her the mountains, he says, leaving his shirt untucked and abandoning his waistcoat for only his jacket and coat, pants tucked into his boots.

She chooses a breezy pair of trousers, the work boots she uses in the case, and her typical work shirt. He brings a pack, bumbling his way up the steps of the case with it on his back, a little off balance on the narrow ladder. She smiles at the sight, but doesn’t question.

It is not a far walk to the hills, and again she is certain that this must be the most beautiful, serene place she’s seen. She pauses when they reach the crest of one peak, breathing in the clean, clean air and admiring the span of the city set pale against the green of the land, the curl of the river.

When she looks back to Newt, he is not observing the land, but her, looking full and eager. 

They find a thicket, alive with birds and the bubble of brooks. Newt has flitterbys caught in his hair after only half an hour, and she laughs, teases that any manner of magical creature was drawn to his very aura. He catches one on his finger and shows her the thin veins of its exoskeleton. The little creature allows these ministrations for a little over a minute before it beats away up into the blue, cloudless sky.

He sets a picnic from his pack, snapping out a checkered blanket onto a grassy hillside, setting it with fat grapes and cheeses and tart strawberries. She reclines easily, munching happily with her head inclined on his strong thigh.

He leans down to kiss her forehead, and whispers that he is happy she came. Tells her that one day, and soon, he shall make a promise a promise. He tries to explain in hurried words that this is something _he wants_ , something he intends. That he fully expects a large amount of royalties sometime soon and…

She shushes away the thought and turns onto her stomach to face him, to press her lips to his.

She could care less about being made an honest woman, she says, so long as he allows her to accompany him, defend him against all these ladies he’s been so worried about. He laughs bashfully, low and rumbling, a seemingly small sound in the expanse of the dell.

She doesn’t care how long it takes, for she has him now. Tomorrow the world will change. For now there is a new spring, a new journey of learning him, and the war—and a wedding—will wait.

**Author's Note:**

> [@allscissorsallpaper](https://allscissorsallpaper.tumblr.com) on tumblr.
> 
> Inspired by a prompt from the amazing [Fantastic Prompts](https://fantasticprompts.tumblr.com) blog on tumblr: "What happens when our favorite couples catch Spring Fever?"


End file.
